1. Field of the Disclosure
The present invention relates to RFID middleware systems, and, more particularly, to apparatus and method for failure management of a RFID middleware management system, for detecting a failure taken place at a RFID middleware and reporting to an application for restoring the system from the failure.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
The RFID middleware is a software system for collecting and refining a large amount of data produced in a RFID environment of different machines, summarizing the data into valuable information, and transferring the data to an application system. Accordingly, the RFID middleware is connected to a plurality of RFID readers which read in sensed tag data, for receiving the tag data at regular time intervals. The RFID middleware is also connected to the application system for receiving information on the RFID readers which require the tag data, and information on required processing methods. The RFID middleware takes a process of collection, classification, and so on of the tag data received from the RFID readers thus, and transfers a result of the process to the application system.
Thus, the RFID middleware serves as a client which demands the tag data from the RFID readers, as well as a server to the application system which requests the tag data.
Recently, as embodiments of functions of the RFID middleware become substantial, importance on management of the RFID middleware management system becomes high. According to this, though the RFID middleware uses one high performance middleware server, in cases of harbor logistics, a plurality of various middleware servers each having various kinds of readers and devices attached thereto are used.
In the meantime, due to failure taken place at the RFID middleware, the RFID application performs a business process based on an imperfect data, impairing effectiveness of the process of the middleware. Therefore, failure management is required for improvement of performance of the RFID middleware, positively.
However, because standardization on management of the RFID middleware system has not been made yet, home and abroad, and passive management of the RFID middleware system is being made, not only detection of the failure is very difficult for a manager even if the failure is taken place, but also restoration from the failure is inconvenient even if the failure is detected, because all of the restoration work is required to be made one by one manually for restoring from the failure. Consequently, in the RFID middleware system management, maintenance is difficult and expenses are increasing.